It’s book central here at Backwoods Horror today it’d seem. I’ve had a copy of both of Tom Savini’s amazing GRANDE ILLUSIONS books for some time (one signed by the man himself), having found them in a box of books donated to the library I was working in at the time. You can imagine the freak-out that followed for yourselves. It was like finding buried treasure. On the inside cover of both, it said that the books were published by Morris Costumes specifically for the costume trade and have been, for the longest time, difficult to get ones claws on. It’s always been one of the high points of my collection. Now, it would seem, the rest of you finally get your chance to check out these amazing books in a re-release that combines both books into one mighty tome you’d be proud to have on your horror shelves.

While it’s not exactly a horror film, I absolutely love Robert Hall’s LIGHTNING BUG. Makeup FX artist Robert Hall is perhaps been best-known as the director of his ultragory LAID TO REST movies, but he launched his filmmaking career with the less gory, but still genre-friendly LIGHTNING BUG, a film I still consider to be his masterpiece.

LIGHTNING BUG hits hi-def disc January 15, 2013 from Image Entertainment in the U.S. and Anchor Bay in Canada, and will be chock full of previously unseen features. Most notably, Hall tells us, “In addition to the theatrical cut, the disc will include an ‘Extended Cut’ that has never been seen before. It contains an entire subplot with Don Gibb in a hilarious role that was cut from the [previous] Anchor Bay version for time. We’re also working on a retrospective with all-new interviews with the key players that we’re hoping to include if we can get it done in time.”

As for the movie itself, “It has been completely remastered and restored from the original print and color-corrected for Blu-ray, supervised my myself and DP Brandon Trost. We also fixed and enhanced some visual effects shots now that we have that luxury. It has never looked this good.”